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View Full Version : Help designing an Encounter Trap



BRC
2008-10-13, 08:22 PM
So, I recently picked up Dungeonscape, and while flipping through it noticed a section called "encounter traps." Intrigued, I read the section. Once I had finished drooling over the concept, I concluded that I MUST use one in the next adventure. The only problem is, I have trouble thinking one up.

The PC's are up against a group of Necromancers in a sewer. Well, technically it used to be a dungeon, the upper levels were converted into a sewer and the lower levels were, for the most part, blocked off. Many of said lower levels have since flooded (This is all on the shoreline BTW). There are a decent amount of undead in the sewers, mostly standard issue mindless/evil undead, but there is a community of good and neutral aligned free-willed undead led by the ghost of a paladin (This paladin died fighting a lich and ended up pinning said lich to the wall with his sword. Lich isn't dead, just pinned and unable to cast spells, so all it can do is send out random necromantic energy in the hopes that some of the undead created may rescue it, hence all the undead in the sewers. It can't really control these undead, the mindless ones just occasionally have an inclination to free this Lich). The necromancers are trying to free said lich, and are doing this by keeping up a constant chant that puts undead that hear it loudly enough (It's magic, so earplugs don't work) under their control, thus preventing the good aligned undead from stopping them.

With all that out of the way, Any ideas for Encounter traps that may be protecting the place where the necromancers are doing their nefarious ritual?

Fax Celestis
2008-10-13, 09:40 PM
One I'll be using in an upcoming campaign is a hallway about 60' long and 20' wide with nodes on both long walls every five feet. If the PCs trigger the trap, two fans at the far end activate, cutting movement speeds of everyone traveling in that direction to 1/4 normal. The next round, sparks begin hopping from nodes on the left wall to the right wall and vice versa.

Stat block looks like this:

Lightning Spark Trap (CR 4, Magical)
Search DC: 19
Trigger: Touch
Initiative: +2
Effect: 2 lightning bolts (line effect from one node to another, Reflex DC 16 half)
Destruction (node): AC 14, 10 HP, hardness 5
Disarm (node): DC 23
Dispel (node): DC 13
Destruction (fan): AC 15, 15 HP, hardness 3
Disarm (fan): DC 18